WinXP wont boot from CD: Gateway 1450 Solo

I recently picked up a Gateway 1450 Solo for a smoking deal with no OS on it. I loaded Linux Mint 9 Fluxbox on it and it works great except for the battery wont hold a charge. Anyways, i have a copy of WinXP on a disc that I want to load on to it but when I put the disc in the drive and boot it up I hear the drive spinning but then it wont boot to the installer, it just goes straight to Mint. I have verified the disc in my desktop and when I boot that up it comes up to the WinXP installer. Does anyone have any ideas on what I should do?Im thinking I may just format the HDD and start from scratch but I'd like some advice. :?

It may seem like a stupid question, but have you checked the BIOS to see what the boot order is? It could be that the hard drive is set as the first boot device, so that the laptop skips the optical drive entirely after detecting the Linux install on the hard drive.

If that turns out to be the problem, go into the BIOS and set the optical drive first in the boot order, with the hard drive second, then try loading WinXP on the machine.

I forgot to mention that in my first post, yes the boot order has been changed, the Optical drive is the first in order.

Did you do a f12, or whatever the boot menu is?

Sometimes, that forces the CD to load.
For me, that is.

AmEv- That did it thanks, now she is up and running again :) just need a new batt and I got a nice new Laptop